Tree Fruit Trends Part 2

Tree Fruit Trends Part 2. I’m Greg Martin with today’s Fruit Grower Report.

Jeff Fagg with Northwest Farm Credit Services recently debuted a new study that was conducted by Farm Credit for the farming industry. He says they grouped the respondents into small and large producer categories with $1-million dollars in gross revenue as the dividing line. He says that when looking at passing the business on there are some differences.

FAGG: If we want to look at the likelihood of transferring the tree fruit business to a family member, I think there are some interesting results here. Large respondents are very much more likely to look at transferring the operations to a family member. Some of that transferring of the operation is that it might be the fact that the economic size of the operations are moving a little bit and some of these small operators don’t feel that the operation is large enough to justify looking transferring to a family member.

Fagg says they also looked at exactly what kinds of crops would be planted in the near future.

FAGG: We wanted to look at the likelihood of planting different apple varieties over the next 5 years and so probably not a lot of surprises here. Again as you look at the large producer is more likely to be looking at planting additional acres in the future. And to a great degree both large and small growers are probably thinking about the same varieties.

For apple producers those additional varieties included Gala, Fuji and Honeycrisp but an interesting note was that club varieties also scored high on what producers may move into in the future. More tomorrow.

That’s today’s Fruit Grower Report. I’m Greg Martin on the Northwest Ag Information Network.